Welcome to my blog. I hope you find something interesting.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Like the faint flutter of butterfly wings, a whisper comes
into your thoughts. While exploring the
history of your family, have you had that experience where you feel like
someone is calling out to you, leading you in a certain direction against all
odds, trying to tell you something? It’s as if they want to be found. They want you to tell their story. Many genealogists I speak with admit to
having this experience.
I’ve had this happen to me twice in my research. Usually you’re dealing with hard, dry facts
on a piece of paper: an old census
record listing names and ages, a deed from the early 1800s, a certain fact from
known history. But then you get the feeling that there is something
else. You feel as if someone is trying
to tell you something, if only you
could get it.
The first time this happened to me I was a rank
beginner. I knew nothing about
genealogy. I had no teacher. Every now and then I would wish I could do
that, what I saw and read others were doing.
I was a certified history nut, so it looked fascinating to me, but it
also looked complicated and I figured it would be too difficult. So I just put these thoughts aside.
I did not come from a family of story tellers. In fact my parents NEVER talked about the
past. Not that they were hiding anything
– they just didn’t seem to be interested in history, in the past. My grandparents and my aunts and uncles were
the same. I never heard them telling
stories about the past. When I got a
little further along in school, I would have a question about where we came
from, what was our heritage, were we English, or French, or German? I would get only very vague answers. They weren't avoiding, they just didn’t know
much about their past. Then the TV show ROOTS came out. I so envied those people. There they were – slaves – such a dark
past. But they had sat on their front
porches and told their stories, and told their stories, and all the family knew
where they had come from, what they had endured, and WHO they were. And there I was – nice comfortable past, no
horror stories, and I knew NOTHING! I
was ashamed and I was MAD!
I had exactly two pieces of information: (1) my mother’s father had said that they
(PARKERs) were Scots Irish, and (2) my father said that his family (HAYWOODs)
had “come from the west!” (It later turned out that both of these
things were true.) I didn’t know
any names back beyond my immediate grandparents. My father did know that his grandfather (no
name) had gone off to the civil war and had never come home. That
was all the family ever knew about him!
It was certainly a lost cause, but as I got older I wanted
to get into it and see what was there, but didn’t know where to start. Then suddenly one day I was contacted by
someone I did not know. She was the
daughter of a cousin I had been close to when I was a young child. Our family, besides not being interested in
history, didn’t have reunions and such to keep in touch. We were close when I was small, and all the
extended family lived in the Charlotte, NC area,. Our families visited on Sunday afternoon, had
big dinners at Grandma’s house. Cousins
had sleepovers. But as time went on,
children got older and developed their own lives, families moved about the
state, they didn’t stay close. Everyone
seemed to be independent, going their own way, doing their own thing. We lost touch.
So I was surprised when I heard from Darlene. Her father had been my close cousin Al Parker. He had died young at age 49 she told me. I was shocked and saddened. I didn’t know that. It pressed home how much we had all grown
apart. Not only did we not know our
past, we didn’t even know our present!
Darlene was into genealogy. She
was working on the PARKERs. She wanted
personal stories, to know all I could tell her about my grandparents, which
were her great grandparents. How
shockingly that brought home the feeling of passing time. It was so recent for me, but so in the past
for her. Made me feel that time was
slipping away FAST!
Darlene and I became very close, constantly on the phone or
Email. I dredged my brain for every tiny
personal memory I had about Harvey M. and Blanche Arant PARKER. And she encouraged me to delve into my
HAYWOODs. She forced me to start. And I did.
My sister and I dug out my mother’s bible which was stored
away in “the cedar chest,” which every
old southern family has, stuffed full of mementos that had meant something to
my mother. In that bible we found a
piece of paper which we had never seen, that listed my father’s family, his
brothers and sisters, his parents (I knew these names but they had both died
before I was born, so I never knew them – they were just names to me,) and
wonder of wonders – there were the names of my father’s grandparents which I
had never seen before: JOSIAH and
MARGARET ALEXANDER HAYWOOD. I had a
starting point!
I lived in Florida then, but as soon as I could, I went to
Monroe, county seat of Union Co. NC, to the N. C. History Room in the Court
House. All my lines are situated in
Union Co. and Mecklenburg Co, out of which Union was formed in 1842. I went to the Register of Deeds office,
looking for anything I could find in the land records. The end result was that I found Josiah. I found a marriage bond for him and Margaret
Alexander dated 8 JAN 1850. I found some
deeds with his name and other Haywood names.
I was so proud of myself! But I
did not find his father and mother. I had found the name Catherine, but could not connect with it.
In a file in the History Room I had also found the name of a
woman in Florence, SC who was researching HAYWOODs. None of her names were familiar to me. But she had traced her line back to a John
Franklin HAYWOOD and his mother was Catherine.
I wrote her, explaining my
dilemma. She replied and was very nice,
but she was certain that her
Catherine could not be my Catherine,
because there was no other information about her Catherine. She had no other connections for John
Franklin!
I agonized and agonized over this, because somehow I knew that this was MY Catherine. My butterfly
wings were working overtime. I just
knew she belonged to me. It was like a
psychic thing. Somehow, with no facts
whatsoever, I absolutely KNEW that this was my Catherine. Peggy and I became avid communicators over
many months. She was almost ready to
publish her book on her HAYWOODs. She
did her line back to John Franklin and I kept working on my line back to
Josiah. Well, in the long run, we
finally discovered that John Franklin and Josiah were brothers, and Catherine
was their mother. We found their names
together on old deeds. We turned out to
be cousins. So we added my line to her
book and she published it, and we became good friends as well as cousins.
So never give up when you absolutely BELIEVE that someone is
yours. Listen to those whispers! Accept that they are reaching out to
you. Keep on digging until the truth
appears – even if it turns out not to be exactly what you wanted. You got the correct facts for your story – and wasn’t the trip FUN!
How we found the husband of Catherine is another odd story
for another day. Along with the story of
how Josiah got lost, after all the work I did to find him. Coming up in future blogs.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
Robert Carpenter has announced his annual
class for Beginning Genealogy at Gaston College in Dallas, NC. Starting
Thursday Sept. 19 through Nov. 21, 2013 (10 sessions) from 7 - 9 p.m. on
Thursday nights. WHO SHOULD SIGN UP? Any person interested in
learning about genealogical research regardless of your level of experience.
Emphasis will involve research strategies, introducing students to
various sources, deciphering documents, and will conclude with a trip to the
State Archives in Raleigh. Anyone with questions about signing up should
contact Robert by email at rcarpenter2@charter.net.
As one who has been there, I can tell you this is a marvelous class for
beginners and intermediates. Robert is considered to be one of the
foremost historians for Lincoln and Gaston Counties, and his head is full of
wonderful genealogical "stuff!" He is currently a professor of
history at Belmont Abbey College. SIGN UP by contacting Gaston College at
704-922-6251 or 704-922-6353 or Email Beth Hollars
at hollars.beth@gaston.edu. They are busy running all over the
school so be persistent in calling. If you leave your number, they will come back to you.
Robert has an Advanced Genealogy Class of 10 sessions starting late in January each year. This class is so popular that students say that "they have failed" so that they can return each year, and there is a bunch who return again and again to experience the class once more. Take if from one who has "failed" over and over in order to take the class again. And I'll be there again in January!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Very exciting things happening in my little Genealogy world.
This is the beginnings of my new genealogy blog. Second posting. In
future writings I will ponder the mysteries we all pursue in research, meander
through my mind where whispers of long passed relatives reach out to me, and
get down to the "nitty-gritty" hard work involved in this endeavor
called GENEALOGY. Hope you find it interesting and come back to me if you
have comments on these subjects or find some connection in my family lines.
See My Family Lines tab at the top.
_____________________________________________________________________
We have a genealogy forum every Tuesday in Belmont, NC. If you live nearby, come join us from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., at the J.Paul Ford Recreation Center at 37 E. Woodrow Ave. Right now, once a month our meeting is devoted to learning to make short personal videos to be inserted into family trees, facebook postings, blogs, YouTube, etc. Our resident guru Jim Antley is teaching us loads of new talents. During other meetings we explore all aspects of genealogy research including storage possibilities, story telling/sharing, genealogy technology, brickwall help, etc . You can find us at: http://belmontgenealogyclub.blogspot.com/ . Of course, when a member in the group needs help, or if someone new comes along with a problem, a "brickwall" or such, we drop what we are doing and all jump in to explore with them. Lots of fun!
___________________________________________________________________
There is also a new Genealogy Group formed in Gastonia, NC.
They meet the first Thursday of the month in the NC History Room, second
floor, at the main Gaston Public Library on Garrison Street in Gastonia. Meeting
time 7:00 - 8:30. NOTE: Because the 4th of July falls on the first
Thursday in July, this particular meeting will back up to the 27th of June.
Thereafter it will always fall on the first Thursday. Linda Klocker
who has had previous groups in Belmont and in Mountain Island Lake will be
leading this new venture. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced researcher,
come meet the group. There was a nice turnout for the first meeting last
week.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is an interesting bit of
information from the folks at Ancestry Insider. It is about what
Ancestry.com is thinking about for the future to improve our researching
capabilities.
The Ancestry Insider
The unofficial,
unauthorized view of Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. The Ancestry Insider
reports on, defends, and constructively criticizes these two websites and
associated topics. The author attempts to fairly and evenly support both.
Here is the link to the Post >http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com/2013/06/ancestrycom-revisiting-search.html
After reading the Post click on The Ancestry Insider at the top of the page to go to the blog home page. There are several other Posts you may find interesting.
